[Coco] NitrOS-9 V3.3.0 and DriveWire

[Boisy G. Pitre]

On Mar 30, 2010, at 1:32 AM, J.P. Samson wrote:

> Boisy,
> 
> I probably should have no say in this since I'm not involved in the NitrOS-9 Project, let alone the CoCo world too much right now.  I also know zero about the work involved in building and maintaining NitrOS-9.  But I'll give my own two cents anyway, just 'cos you asked.
> 
> I'd like to see some minimum support for the various floppy disk-based variants of NitrOS-9 that have been developed.  With that in mind, here are my desired additions to your recommendations:
> 
> 1.  For those who like running souped-up CoCo hardware, keep the 6309 with 80-track DSDD distribution (for 3.5" floppy disk systems).  All your other recommendations for the OS distribution are fine with me, and maintain compatibility with the standard "Radio Shack-approved" CoCo configurations (i.e. 6809's and 40-track floppy drives).

If you look at the makefiles which create these disk images, they are quite large. Keeping 80 track DSDD images and doing away with 40 track DSDD ones would be preferable since the entire OS can fit on one DSDD image.  However, most people have 40 track DSDD disk drives on their systems.

If we keep the 80 track DSDD images for the OS then it would make sense to do so across the board for 6809 Level 1, 6809 Level 2 and 6309 Level 2.  I may keep the 80 track images after all.

> 2.  I don't know how much the various games benefit from NitrOS-9 going forward.  If they run just fine with whatever is the current stable NitrOS-9 release, then build the various disk images and freeze them.  In a sense, these become the final commercial releases of the games (on floppy disk, at any rate).  You may wish to freeze a copy of the system as it is used to build these disk images, too, just in case something goes wrong and needs to get rebuilt somewhere down the line.

Well, we have the regular release cycle (3.2.4, 3.2.6, 3.2.8) and the NitrOS-9 nightlies (which aren't being built at the moment, but will be started up again soon).  It's not just the OS that might change, but the game code themselves.  I don't mind releasing a whole slew of disk images at every release, I just want to cut down on the volume of disk images per release (and per nightly build).

After posting the message, I realized that emulator users would be affected by a  lack of these game disk images that boot from floppy, so having these games with floppy boots are still desirable. 

> -- JP
> 
> 
> On Mar. 29, 2010, at 9:50 PM, Boisy G. Pitre wrote:
> 
>> As most of you know, the NitrOS-9 Project has grown massively in
>> scope.  There are all sorts of disk images that can be created, from
>> the OS disk images itself to the Sierra games, and more.  Moreover,
>> myself and a few people are actually actively maintaining all of this
>> work.
>> 
>> What complicates this is the sheer number of bootable configurations
>> we are supporting.  For the OS alone we have:  NitrOS-9/6809 Level 1,
>> NitrOS-9/6809 Level 2, NitrOS-9/6309 Level 2
>> 
>> For each of those we have:  40 Track DSDD, 80 Track DSDD, 40 Track
>> DSDD 50Hz, 80 Track DSDD 50Hz, DriveWire Boot
>> 
>> In order to make all of this manageable, I am considering the
>> following: - Drop 80 Track DSDD support for the OS and have only 40
>> Track DSDD disk images.  This would leave each OS with: 40 Track DSDD,
>> 40 Track DSDD 50Hz, and DriveWire boot disk images.
>> 
>> - For all other packages (Sierra games, other games like Koronis Rift,
>> Rescue on Fractalus, etc) we will drop the floppy disk images and make
>> these disk images exclusively DriveWire bootable.
> 
> 
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